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Updated: June 3, 2025
Countless as have been the reprints of The Natural History of Selborne, its original form is no longer, perhaps, familiar to many readers. The first edition, which is now before me, is a very handsome quarto.
There is an expression to its little beak which always reminds me of my girl." Aunt Barbara was much amused, but confessed that she remembered it, and that Betty and the bird really resembled each other. "I think there is a very good print of it in the large White's 'Selborne' which you sent me," she said, going to one of the bookshelves and taking it down.
Hence some trees are regarded with special veneration particularly the lime and pine and persons of a superstitious turn of mind, "may often be seen carrying sickly children to a forest for the purpose of dragging them through such holes." This practice formerly prevailed in our own country, a well-known illustration of which we may quote from White's "History of Selborne:"
All of which seems nothing less than marvellous to-day. I set out from Winchester early one June morning by Jewry Street, as it were out of the old North Gate to follow, perhaps, the oldest road in old England towards Alton, intending to reach Selborne more than twenty miles away eastward on the tumble of hills where the North Downs meet the South, before night.
Crossing from Midhurst over the border into Hampshire, the village of Selborne is reached, one of the smallest but best known places in England from the care and minuteness with which Rev. Gilbert White has described it in his Natural History of Selborne.
While White's "Selborne," and the pictures of Bewick, and Thoreau's "Walden," and the "Autobiography of Richard Jefferies" endure, so long will "Among the Isles of Shoals" hold its place with all lovers of nature.
They all had in his day little churches, and the parish church of Greatham, not far from Selborne, is a specimen of the antique construction of the diminutive chapels that his ancestors handed down to their children for places of worship, each surrounded by its setting of ancient gravestones.
Those high-impending forests, "hangers," as White of Selborne would have called them, sloping far upward and backward into the distance, had always an air of menace blended with their wild beauty.
Indeed, its natural scenery, mineralogy, geology, botany, antiquities, manners, &c. have been more frequently and better described by travellers, than those of any other portion of the British empire. The History and Antiquities of Selborne, in the County of Southampton. By the Rev. Gil. White. 1789, 4to. This most delightful work has lately been republished in 2 vols. 8vo.
There are coaches of all varieties nowadays; perhaps this may be intended for a monthly diligence, or a fortnight fly. Will you walk with me through our village, courteous reader? The journey is not long. We will begin at the lower end, and proceed up the hill. *White's 'Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne; one of the most fascinating books ever written.
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